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Thursday, November 18, 2010

The four pics above-Dave Tarras.......the pics below are of Naftule Brandwein

First, some bio....

Dave Tarras

Tarras, born Dovid Tarraschuk in Ternivka, (a village in Teplytskyi Raion, Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine), was the son of a klezmer trombonist and Badkhn. He grew up playing a variety of instruments and surrounded by the music. He was conscripted into the tsar's army in 1915, but his talents as a musician kept him out of the trenches. In 1921 he emigrated to New York City, where worked in a garment factory for a time.

Eventually he found that he could make money as a musician, and found a place as a clarinetist in many of New York's klezmer ensembles. In addition to Jewish music, he also recorded Greek, Polish, and Russian tunes.

His reliability and skill saw him play for many years after that other famous klezmer clarinetist, Naftule Brandwein, died, and he was certainly the most famous one from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s. He also mentored many younger klezmer musicians who went on to become famous, such as Andy Statman.

Tarras died in 1989 in Oceanside, Nassau County, New York and left a daughter, Broune, and a son, Seymour, and seven grandchildren.

Now, Naftule........

Naftule Brandwein

Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, (1884–1963) was a Jewish clarinetist and influential in klezmer music.

Brandwein was born in Przemyslany, Galicia (now Ukraine), into a family of klezmer musicians, part of the Strettener Hasidic dynasty of Rabbi Yehuda Hirsch Brandwein of Stratyn. His father Peysekhe played violin and was an improvising wedding poet (badkhn); of his thirteen sons, Moyshe played violin, French horn, and valve trombone, Mendel played piano, Leyzer played drums, and Azriel played cornet; Azriel became Naftule's first music teacher, and had a lasting impact on his playing.

In 1908 Brandwein emigrated at the age of nineteen to the United States where he quickly became a star of the 78 rpm record era, proclaiming himself the "King of Jewish Music". Thus, he was considered to be among the first wave of American klezmer artists, those trained in the Old World, as opposed to the second generation who learned their skills in America. Between 1922 and 1927, he cut twenty-four records, first as a member of Abe Schwartz's orchestra, and then as a solo artist after 1923.

Brandwein was known as much for his colorful personality as for his musical talent, often playing with a neon sign, reading "Naftule Brandwein Orchestra", around his neck, and with his back facing the audience, to conceal his fingering tricks. He also wore plugged-in Christmas lights as part of his costume on several occasions, which once shorted out when he perspired too much, almost electrocuting him. His wild style incorporated not only the influence of Jewish music, but also flourishes of Greek, Turkish, and Gypsy music. His warm and lively playing style would constantly jump up and down the scale and express itself in trills, slides and other ornamentation; he is often contrasted to the other famous klezmer clarinettist of his time, Dave Tarras, who had a more conservative but nonetheless very talented playing style.

Brandwein was notoriously unreliable, unable to read music, and possessed of a reputation as a nasty drunk. He even supposedly played private shows in backrooms for the largely Jewish contract killing gang Murder, Inc..

His career soured from the mid-1920s onward, as demand for his traditional approach to klezmer music waned; he made his last recording in 1941 and lived out his final years in relative obscurity, playing in the Borscht Belt.

While he did not live to witness the resurgence of interest in klezmer that began in the mid-1970s, his legacy has been revived by a new generation of klezmer musicians, who cite him as a key source of inspiration. The intricate traditions of klezmer music are not well preserved in sheet music, and his recordings are one of the main sources people look to for the "original" klezmer style.

Sooooo......If Dave Tarras was the "Benny Goodman" of Klezmer, one can probably say that Naftule Brandwein was a kind of a "Charlie Parker", a genius with a wild life.....

Thus, a two part list..............not really a "battle of the bands", if you will........just two geniuses...........each excellent, but different. And, though you might not think of jazz as being from the Jewish tradition.....listen....this swings at the highest level.....now listen to later jazz.....you'll hear this in there......and not just from the clarinet of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, I hear it strongly in a lot of early New Orleans jazz, too.

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The 1940 U.S. Census Project

THE 1940 CENSUS IMAGES ARE NOW RELEASED! On April 2, 2012, NARA released the digital images of the 1940 Unites States Federal Census after a 72 year embargo. These census images will be uploaded and made available on Archives.com, FindMyPast.com, and FamilySearch.org.

The goal of all this business....

About Me

I appraise antiques for a living, dealt them for years. I'm a practicing barber (old school...shears, etc..no clippers w/ guards, here). Collector of Democratic political memorabilia,vintage barber supplies, and old music. Ummmm, probably born in the wrong era...blahblahblah

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